On March 30, 2014, Kahlil Bowlin was shot and killed in Queens, New York. Bowlin was a member of the S.N.O.W. gang, and its rivals included the Wood City gang.
In the months prior to the shooting, officers with the New York Police Department had been monitoring the Facebook postings of members of the S.N.O.W. gang, and after Bowlin’s death, the police continued to monitor these social media accounts, looking for indications that the gang was planning to retaliate against Wood City.
When S.N.O.W. members met in Montbellier Park on April 1, 2014, police converged on the scene and arrested 19-year-old Jahmarley Jones, 17-year-old Justin Campbell, and several other persons, charging them with unlawful assembly. Trevor Lucas, who was then 22 years old, was arrested on September 16, 2014. Dane’e Cato, who was then 22 years old, was arrested on January 26, 2015.
All four were eventually charged with first- and second-degree conspiracy to commit murder.
Their joint trial in Queens County Supreme Court stretched over 10 weeks and began in late 2015. One of the officers involved in the arrests was Detective Kevin Desormeau, although available records don’t indicate whether he testified at trial or at any preliminary hearings.
The state’s case was built around the testimony of Detective Adam Georg and Sergeant Robert Bracero, members of a Strategic Enforcement Team (SET) that operated out of the 113th Precinct.
Over the objections of attorneys for the four defendants, Georg and Bracero testified as experts in the “hierarchy, practices, and language” of the S.N.O.W. gang and its rivals.
Georg testified that his knowledge of gang activities had been gleaned from 70 to 80 debriefings of gang members following their arrests on charges unrelated to the charges against the four defendants. Bracero testified that he had debriefed about 50 S.N.O.W. members.
Bracero testified about how he and other members of the department’s gang task units observed gang members, interviewed them after arrests, and followed them on social media. He said this allowed the officers to learn about their organization and the roles of the various members.
“It’s similar to if you are looking to learn another language, you may go to a foreign country and [immerse] yourself in the culture and language with them to better learn it,” Bracero said.
During his testimony, Bracero told the jury what he thought the S.N.O.W. gang’s posts on Facebook meant, based on his debriefings of gang members and his monitoring of their social media accounts.
For example, Bracero testified that “stacey” was S.N.O.W. slang for a gun. A prosecutor asked Bracero how he made that determination.
Bracero said, “It’s based on my knowledge derived from the interviews or debriefings of members of the S.N.O.W. gang as well as through conversation with individuals in the neighborhood, including S.N.O.W. gang members as well as through social media.”
Attorneys for the four defendants frequently objected, arguing that the officers’ testimony was hearsay because the men who had written or spoken this slang or made these hand gestures hadn’t testified. As a result, the defendants had been denied their constitutional rights to confront their accusers. Justice Robert Kohm overruled their objections.
During cross examination, Bracero testified that he sometimes offered inducements to the gang members. This included reducing a top charge to a lower charge and also on occasion talking to prosecutors about possible sentence reductions. Bracero testified that some of the debriefed gang members became confidential informants for the police. He also said none of the debriefings were recorded.
A defense attorney asked Bracero whether there was any recording of him talking with a S.N.O.W. member that indicated Bracero understood the conversation.
“I don’t believe so,” Bracero said.
“And there’s nothing there to show that this alleged S.N.O.W. gang member actually understands you, is that correct?” a defense attorney asked.
“Correct,” Bracero said.
On January 20, 2016, the jury convicted all four defendants on second-degree conspiracy. Jones was also convicted of unlawful assembly. Justice Kohl later sentenced each defendant to 8 to 25 years in prison.
The four men appealed.
Lucas argued that there had been insufficient evidence to support his conviction. The Supreme Court of New York’s Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department, reversed the conviction and dismissed the indictment against Lucas on November 14, 2018. Lucas was released from prison a few days later. The court said there was no direct or circumstantial evidence tying Lucas to any plan to kill rival gang members. He wasn’t at the park when the police made the initial arrests and was not listed as a participant in any social media discussions about retaliation, the court said.
Jones, in his appeal, also argued insufficient evidence but said that the testimony of Georg and Bracero about the information they learned from the gang debriefings should have been excluded as inadmissible hearsay evidence. In addition, the appeal said that Justice Kolm had erred in allowing Georg to read Facebook posts verbatim to the jury, testify about the posts, and then connect them with telephone numbers of the defendants and others. The appeal said that Georg was no longer acting as an expert witness but was instead usurping the jury’s function to interpret the evidence.
The New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division, Second Department, granted Jones a new trial on November 14, 2018. The case was dismissed on November 23, 2018, and he was released that day.
“To the extent that testimonial hearsay was the source material for such testimony, there is no indication that Georg or Bracero merely relied on such hearsay for the purpose of forming an independent opinion based on their own expertise,” the court wrote. “To the contrary, it appears that Georg and Bracero were impermissibly allowed to convey the substance of such hearsay to the jury for its truth.”
The New York Court of Appeals denied the state’s motion to appeal. On June 25, 2019, the state filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in the United States Supreme Court. It said that the state courts had erred in applying federal court rulings on the admissibility of statements made to the police prior to the commission of a crime. This “imperils all gang and terrorism prosecutions,” the filing said.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied the petition on October 25, 2019. Jones’s case was dismissed on December 14, 2019.
The New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division, Second Department, vacated the convictions of Cato and Campbell on July 31, 2019, on the same grounds used in the court’s decision on Jones, and he was released from prison. Cato’s case was dismissed on August 21, 2019. Campbell’s case is sealed.
While the appeals were underway, Desormeau had been indicted in 2017 and then convicted in January 2018 of perjury, official misconduct, and making a punishable false written statement. That misconduct led to 68 defendants having their convictions vacated and charges dismissed in 2021. More information on these wrongful convictions can be found on our Groups Registry.
On June 13, 2019, Lucas filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against the city of New York and several officers, including Bracero and Desormeau, involved in his wrongful conviction. He settled the lawsuit in 2020, receiving $525,000.
On February 15, 2021, Jones and Cato filed a lawsuit in Queens County Supreme Court against Bracero, Georg, and other officers, seeking compensation for their wrongful convictions.
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 04-21-2026
